The food is really good. It is pretty and it is fresh and it is presented with a surprising artfulness on the plate in an almost Jeremiah Tower-meets-Gotham kind of glorious and overwhelming simplicity. My first meal was straight out of the Alfred Portale playbook — an avocado tower filled with rock shrimp salad — and plated like something from Chez Panisse: in mounds, dressed with fresh, local greens and garnished with grilled vegetables marked with perfect quadrillage. Although I loathe celery (the Devil's tuber) and the shrimp salad was full of it (in addition to a lovely brunoise of red onion and roasted pepper and a restrained mix of herbs), I couldn't stop eating. I devoured every bit of the salad, chasing bites with huge chunks of beautifully fresh and fatty avocado, then stabbing the scratch-made croutons (made from the leftover house bread, which is also excellent) with my fork and using them like tiny little bulldozers to plow whatever scraps I'd missed into piles that I could scoop up and eat.
When I returned for breakfast — during one of Organixx's off-hours, when the dining room was cool and quiet and empty — I had a simple organic egg, ham and cheddar breakfast sandwich on the best brioche I've found in Denver. And then I ordered the breakfast burrito, which is where these straight hippie, granola-eating operations invariably fall apart, since burritos packed with bean sprouts and wrapped in dry, mealy whole-grain tortillas cannot possibly stand up against the quick-and-dirty breakfast burritos I love at every little taquería west of the Mississippi. But Organixx impressed me again by stuffing a good (though thin) tortilla with scrambled eggs so rich and yellow they were almost orange, chopped potatoes, cheese, bacon (from, one would assume, happy, local and free-range pigs) and chopped green chiles and serving it with a side of fresh fruit. It wasn't the best breakfast burrito I've ever had, but it was damned good. And as I stood to leave, Chang nearly vaulted the counter and raced me to the front door to wish me a good day just because he didn't have anything else to do for those ten seconds.
Organixx makes good food that tastes good.
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OrganixxSandwiches $9Salads $6/$9Breakfast sandwich $7Breakfast burrito $8Pancakes $7
1520 Blake Street
303-825-1550
Hours: 8 a.m.-3 p.m. daily
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The only miss I found at Organixx was the potato salad, threaded with something I'm guessing was shredded cabbage but that tasted like old newspaper. But then, that potato salad came on the side of a brilliant sandwich of smoked turkey, gingered cranberry-apple chutney and Brie on sourdough. It was so fine that I was even able to forgive the sprouts piled on top, and I am not a man who generally forgives sprouts on anything. The salmon burger, made with wild-caught salmon, onions, peppers and rémoulade, was entirely un-disgusting — a remarkable achievement, because I've never had a fish burger that was anything but gross. The Peruvian roast beef with garlic aioli and smoky red barbecue sauce was amazing, made with asado-style beef and roasted peppers and mounted on a forgettable baguette that I forgot mostly because I was busy pulling the beef off and eating it with my fingers. And the kitchen also does cherry pancakes (in season), which were so awesome I could ignore the fact that they were multi-grain and probably better for me than anything else I'd put in my mouth the entire week.
That, then, is the trick of Organixx. Sure, the organic-this and all-natural-that may get some people in the door, and the local-only mantra may make those of a particular political bent feel good about spending their money inside. But no one in their right mind continues going to a restaurant for its politics alone. You don't feed your hunger with mere words.
You do it with pancakes and bacon and eggs and burritos. Everything else is just (organic) gravy.
To see more of Organixx, go to westword.com/slideshow. Contact the author at jason.sheehan@westword.com.
